IT career choices

[deca300]

Hi guys,

Which field would be a good choice for someone in IT. That's a bit future proof. I don't see AD and Exchange being on premises for much longer due to cloud, or am I wrong here? Onsite virtualisation also seems to be moved into the cloud. What would be a good set of skills to attain in the IT field today?

Office 365/ Azure or security?

What is your say on a good career in IT?

 

[SauRoNZA]

Just because it's in the cloud doesn't change anything about someone managing it.

How often does your servers being physically being on site make any difference to your job?

You log into them through a virtual terminal pretty much always. That remains the same.

Get some Linux cred. Broaden your horizons past windows. Or get cloud specific certifications since that worries you already.

 

[Zipkoppie]

The cloud is just someone else's server, but those servers still need to be managed, but I think the demand will be less, because the provider just need to hire one engineer to look after 10 servers, instead of 10 companies each hiring 1 person to manage their server.

You can't go wrong with security, there is currently a massive shortage world wide of talented security staff. I work in security and the hours are long and the required learning never stops, but the money is extremely good and I constantly get companies bugging me to come work from them, so if you are up to it, security is the way to go.

 

[noosphere]

@zipkoppie - I am going to assume you are not in Cape Town and I wish the "the money is extremely good" applies here in CPT as well.

edit: i do agree that security (infosec or techsec) is a good path to go down.

 

[Zipkoppie]

You're right, I'm not in Cape Town, but I also don't work for a South African company, I work for an overseas based company.
You also have to keep in mind that I'm not just starting my career now and have many years of experience and work in a security field where the skills are more sought after than just the average firewall/AV security engineer.

That being said, I know my peers working for local companies are also paid well, if you look at all the myBB salary surveys a senior security engineer makes more than network or sys admins. At the moment, most pentesting teams here in SA has open positions and are always looking for people with the right skills, if you have those skills, then you have an advantage when it comes to salary negotiations

 

[noosphere]

I hear you. I am in my first "proper" security role - when i say proper I mean i have the title to go with it though I have worked on multiple security technologies etc throughout my technical career. I had the OSCP penciled down for this year but never got to it as the organization i work for prioritized other certs.

@deca300 - sorry for hijacking this thread but to directly answer your question, if you do not choose to go the dev/devops route and choose one of the other paths (security, engineering, admin) I would strongly advise learning a scripting language or a compiled language as it could be something that sets you apart from the rest.